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RE: A Word on Steemit and DMCA 512 Takedowns --some food for thought.
Great insight. I agree that civil liability is a possibility for node operators, etc., though I can think of some defenses that might prevail. Even so, the system seems to be censorship resistant overall since I imagine it would be difficult for any single court to obtain jurisdiction over a sufficient number of witnesses to force a fork, and it one did, Steem holders could instantly elect new witnesses before the fork occurred.
It's a fascinating topic.
I actually think this issue is going to be the first big crisis for steem, if it makes it past the near future. Because this is an absolutely perfect platform to post and monetize torrent links. kickass just went down, and TPB nodes are getting pulled as fast as they can put them up.
There is no way to really keep torrent links off the chain (and even if there were, im not sure a lot of ppl would be cool with it here) and The people looking to kill these torrent sites are both well funded and relentless.
The first true test of blockchain censorship resistance. It will be fun to watch regardless of the outcome.
It's easy enough for those looking to kill torrent links to require Steemit to do so, and I'm sure that Steemit would readily comply by refusing to display the link on its site if ordered. But, this of course doesn't remove it from the blockchain.
Which raises an interesting issue. Even ignoring blockchains for a minute, can those who are looking to kill torrent links actually force you or me to delete the link from our personal computer even though we may not be using it and even though we may not be sharing it with others? Suppose that I had an ordinary database that includes links to torrent within it, I didn't display the content of that database on a website or otherwise make it public and I didn't make use of the content (link) myself. Could the industry force me to delete this information from my computer nonetheless?
I'm not so sure. They can certainly prevent me from advertising it or making it available to others or from using it myself, but I'm not sure that they can force me to destroy info on my personal computer's database provided that I'm not using it illegally. And I don't think its very existence makes it illegal. There would be First Amendment and other issues with taking that position.
With that background, consider that blockchains are simply PUBLIC databases that are censorship resistant. Can courts force nodes to remove info form the blockchain? Court's can require that which is effectively impossible, so that's unlikely. Can they then hold a node operator liable for something that he/she can't control? After all, he/she didn't add the link to the blockchain, the public did, and he/she had absolutely no way to prevent it. Again, I don't think courts can hold people liable for something they didn't do and can't control.
It seems to me that the only likely remedy available to a court is to order sites like Steemit not do display certain content from the blockchain. Thus, Steemit could and would comply with a takedown notice. But the data would remain in the database and...that may be legally okay for the same reason that it may be okay for such data to reside on my personal database unused.
Of course hackers will create websites or separate software (blockchain explorers) that can read all content on the database regardless of what Steemit or other public-facing UIs choose to display, but the remedy for the industry is then to pursue those hackers directly (just like they do now) rather than pursuing node operators who are powerless to prevent it.
Regardless, it's going to be interesting to see this play out.